Advice Column: Applying To Business School Last Minute?

Hello P&Q readers, and welcome to my advice column! My name is Karen Marks, and I am the Founder and President of North Star Admissions Consulting. I have been helping people get into their dream schools since 2012, and prior to that I was the Associate Director of Admissions at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Today, my goal is to give applicants the accurate, insider information that they need in order to succeed and make good decisions. Want your question answered in a future column? Ask away, no topic is off limits!

Currently, many of you are putting the finishing touches on your Round 2 applications. Ideally, you have been working on your materials for months. However, if you find yourself applying to business school last minute, it’s especially important to prioritize your efforts.

The key to pulling off great last minute business school applications is organization.

Create a calendar with all of your upcoming deadlines, planning to submit each application at least 3 business days before it’s due, and work backwards. (This avoids last minute essays or application form completion, which tend to lead to typos and other errors.)

After organizing your work, organize your thoughts. At the heart of any strong application is a clear and persuasive articulation of your goals, and why you need an MBA to accomplish them. (Also known as your elevator pitch.) Before you write anything else, make sure that you can confidently explain what you want to do.

Next, generate content by thinking about your key themes. What do schools need to know about you in order to understand what you bring to the table? What formative experiences have shaped you, and what are you most proud of? When have you failed, and how did you react?

To sell your interest in and alignment with each school, you need to research each program’s classes, professors, clubs, experiential learning opportunities, and other distinctive features. Spend at least an hour per school gathering relevant details that you can weave into your materials.

Save yourself time by answering the questions clearly and directly. The best business school essays are honest and straightforward, so write as though you are answering a direct question from a close friend.

I highly recommend completing one full application, including the form, before moving on to the next one, instead of working on multiple application simultaneously. (This is not to say that you can’t re-use essays, including goal statements, since your story shouldn’t change from school to school.)

The forms themselves take longer than most people think, and they can include hidden mini-essays. Also, spell-check doesn’t work in the forms – I can’t tell you how many applications I have reviewed, both now and when I was the Associate Director of Admissions at Tuck, that were ridden with egregious typos. Avoid this by giving yourself enough time to proofread.

Update this right after you craft your goal statement, making sure to highlight your transferrable skills.

It’s notoriously hard to get recommenders to complete last minute forms over the holidays. Make sure that you are communicating proactively and supporting them as much as possible, without writing anything for them. Also, definitely let your recommenders know that you will be submitting several days before the deadline.

That aforementioned calendar? Stick to it. This is NOT the time to put anything off. Also, if you wind up reapplying the committee will likely review this year’s application, so it’s especially important to make sure that your materials are polished and thoughtful.

Karen has more than 15 years of experience evaluating candidates for admission to Dartmouth College and to the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Since founding North Star Admissions Consulting in 2012, she has helped applicants gain admission to the nation’s top schools, including Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Wharton, MIT, Tuck, Columbia, Kellogg, Booth, Haas, Duke, Johnson, Ross, NYU, UNC, UCLA, Georgetown and more. Clients have been awarded more than $70 million dollars in scholarships, and more than 98% have gotten into one of their top choice schools.